Sloane and I have always known that our dad wasn’t our biological father. Maybe it should have bothered us more. Maybe we should have spent more time wondering about our sperm donor. But we didn’t. Dad raised us. He loved us. We loved him. He was our father. Mom used to tell us this cute story, when we were small, about how mommies were princesses and daddies had special prince dust they sprinkled on mommies to put babies in their tummies. Mommy and Daddy loved each other so much and wanted babies, but Daddy was all out of his special prince dust. So another prince let us borrow some of his so that Mommy and Daddy could be parents.
This was a perfect story, because it was the right amount of information for our little toddler minds to process, and when we went to school and told the other kids that another prince spread prince dust on our mommy, the teacher didn’t send notes home.
So prince dust it was.
I was realizing now how very unimportant the prince dust was in comparison with the work of actually being a father. I needed a husband and a partner and a supporter right now, not a sperm donor. I had forgotten what a mess new motherhood can make you. How vulnerable you suddenly are. How exhausted. How utterly alone. And the last time, I hadn’t been cut from stem to stern. Were you honestly expected to breastfeed when you had a giant (well, I mean, you know, like a two-inch) incision across where the baby was supposed to lie?
Aside from the pain and the feeling that I was going to lose my mind, life was perfect. I had a brand-new little boy with ten fingers and ten toes and chubby pink cheeks and that intoxicating baby smell. Even three weeks early, the kiddo had been nearly eight pounds, which was still bigger than Vivi had been at full term. It might have been because I was much bigger this time, but it’s not polite to discuss such things.
Mom had been utterly amazing, despite the fact that although she was trying to hide it from me, I knew something was going on with Grammy. I had caught her in a few hushed conversations with Uncle Scott.
Every time the baby woke up, she would get him from his crib, bring him to me so I could feed him lying down in the bed, sit with me the whole time so I didn’t accidentally fall asleep, change his diaper, and then do the whole thing over again in another ridiculously short amount of time. I was thankful that Hummus was to arrive this afternoon. She might have missed the birth, but we begged her to come help with the baby. I couldn’t stand the idea of a baby nurse I had never even met coming to live with us.
I couldn’t believe that Preston was already one week old. Even though his father was a schmuck, I still named my beautiful boy James Preston Beaumont IV, as planned. In reality, we were city folk, and James Preston Beaumont was a name you could really use if you lived in Manhattan. In addition to its New York cachet, it also rang of old Southern money, where it had originated, which thrilled my mother.
Mom and I were putting clothes away in Preston’s drawers and making up the twin bed in his room for Hummus when she said, “I know you’re kind of delicate right now, but have you given any consideration to what you’re going to do about James?”
The baby was napping, so I kept my voice low, but I looked at her like she had suggested I take up vampire hunting as a new career. “What I’m going to do about him?” I whispered. “I’m going to divorce his sorry ass and take him for everything he has is what I’m going to do about him.”
She nodded, but I knew there was more.
“What, Mom? Just say it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I told him I would tell you not to take him back under any circumstances.” She paused. “But Caroline, being a single mother is a hard life. You girls weren’t even that small, and it took all I had.”
I looked around. I needed a Preggie Pop. I didn’t see one, so I rubbed a tiny Kissy Kissy convertible day gown on my cheek to calm me. It was so soft. “You know what else is hard, Mom? Wondering if your husband is cheating on you all the time. Walking around New York with everyone talking about how you’re the idiot who took back the guy who paraded all over national television with someone else while he was married. I don’t think I can be that girl.”
She shut the drawer quietly and said, “OK. I get it.” We stepped out of the room, and she crossed her arms and looked at me squarely. “I know you know everything,” she said, “but I am your mother, and I am allowed to have an opinion, and I will continue to do so until I die. So we’re clear.”
I raised my eyebrows. What was clear was that she was really tired. I could scarcely remember the woman ever standing up to me. I smiled at her. “Go, Mom. Way to assert yourself. Is it the new man?”
She sighed, exasperated. “There’s no new man. Only an ambush from my daughters.”
Emerson appeared at the top of the stairs, and I could tell she had been crying. In retrospect, she had been kind of weird the past few days, but I was so overwhelmed I hadn’t had much time to worry about it.
“Caroline,” she said, her chin quivering. Sometimes I wondered if she really got this upset about things or if she was that good an actress.
I didn’t know what this was about, but I was sure I wasn’t up for it.
“I am soooo sorry,” Emerson said, one fat tear falling down her cheek.
My heart started to pound. I sighed. “What else could possibly have happened to be sorry about?”
She hugged me and said, “I feel so guilty.” Now the sobbing began in earnest.
And she should feel guilty. I was too busy to be paying attention, but it was definitely out in the media that my semifamous sister was playing my husband’s überfamous lover in a new movie. You couldn’t blame the people. It made for a fabulous story.
And I was still mad, for sure. But having Preston put everything into perspective. I was a mother. I had a brand-new life to attend to. The miracle baby I had prayed for and wished for and tried to have for years and years and years until I had finally given up had arrived. So I was still angry with Emerson. But having Preston reminded me what really mattered.
“It’s my fault that Preston was born early!” Em sobbed.
She was still hugging me, and I rolled my eyes at Mom over her shoulder. I actually hadn’t considered that it was Emerson’s fault that Preston came early.
“Emerson, I really can’t right now, OK? Preston is healthy and fine, and it doesn’t matter.”
She pulled away from me, those big blue eyes full of water. “I know, but I feel awful. Car, I just need you to understand. It has been so hard for me to get ahead in this business. It’s like, all of a sudden, everyone is talented and beautiful and special.” She looked me straight in the eye with a steeliness that told me, no matter how down she might be feeling, she wasn’t going to give this up. Not yet. Not without a fight. “You can’t imagine how terrible it feels to be average.” She shuddered as she said the word and I smiled in spite of myself.
I nodded and winked at her. “I’m the one who just gave birth. I’m supposed to be emotional. Not you.”
She sniffed, wiped her nose on her shirtsleeve, and hugged me again. “Can you ever forgive me?”